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Patriotism, Philanthropy, and Religion. 



^N ^DDHIESS 



BEFORE THE 



Sir\eridcin doloi)i^ktion ^odiety 



JANUARY 18, 1877, 



ALEXANDER T. McGILL, D.D. LED. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



WASHINGTON CITY : 

Colonization Building, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue, i 

1877. 



I « « * « ^^^^^^^^ 



McGill & Witherow, Printers, Washington, D. C. 



)_. Patriotism, Philanthropy, and RinjcioN. 



^N ADI^RlilSS 



HEFOKK THE 



AmericaiN Colonization Society. 



JANUARY 16, 1877, 



ALEXANDER T. McGILL, D.D. LED. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



WASHINGTON CITY : 

Colonization Buildikg, 450 r'ENNRYLVASiA Avenue. 
1877. 



A.13DRESS. 



Mr. President: Truthfulness must be considered the only rock on 
which any moral reform or social combination will ever abide. After 
long observation I affirm th^t the American Colonization Society is 
the most truthful institution of uninspired wisdom I have known to 
be set up amid the passions of men and changes of time. No rock in 
ocean ever stood the conflict ot surges at the base and tumult of storms 
at the summit with more simple and unchanging aspect of stability and 
usefulness. Truth is not simple as error is. She disdains the poverty 
of one idea, prefers to be complex, proceeds with a balance, and re- 
poses with confidence only when she is many-sided in her complete- 
ness. The wreath which was laid on the cradle of this organization — 
patriotisTH, philanthropy, and religion — is the same as it was threescore 
years ago, without the fading of one leaf or flower, whilst every other 
society with but one of these objects in its aim has withered away. 
Truth is also positive in her moderation. Error is negative, and 
therefore easier as well as simpler, coinciding with the passions of 
men, and achieving success with a quicker speed than is possible for 
the solid and temperate and well-poised movement of the true. 

Societies younger than ours, with the one idea of abolishing slavery 
at any cost and without delay, have triumphed already and disappeared, 
because their work is done. But ours may now be seen coming slowly 
up, with scant resources, to a ravaged field and forlorn occupation, and 
yet the best opportunity that ever dawned on her benevolence. No 
changes have changed her in the least. Slavery predominant and 
slavery destroyed are just the same thing to her interference — the 
problem of the black man remaining unsolved to her eye. We have 
always proposed to work with him as a freeman, and therefore gladly 
accept his emancipation everywhere. But what is freedom to him in 
the social degradation which yet remains? What is liberty worth 
when his own is used by others more than by himself, and that to 
make him a slave to his own passions? What is the bill of rights in 
his hand when it is reddened in a war of races or trampled with con- 



tempt, which no constitutional amendment can amend in the constitu- 
tion of our nature ? What is religion itself to him, the freedom with 
which the Son makes free, when its altars are abandoned for the polls, 
and its pulpits forsaken by the best culture it has, for the stump, the 
tribunal, and the brawl of pot-house politicians? 

It must be confessed that complicated misery and fearful danger 
attend the glory of his manumission still, and it calls for more than 
one idea to heal the complication. No remedy here can advance 
him another step ; no mechanism of party can put on him the true 
habiliment of manhood. We must send him home, when he is will- 
ing to go, and see that his home is attractive and safe, as it was not 
when he was torn from it and sold from bondage to bondage. We 
must consign him as a citizen from one Republic to another, with 
gain to him in the transfer of true instead of nominal " liberty, 
equality, and fraternity." We must do by him for his home what 
the navies of Christendom could not do for the coast of Africa — stop 
the traffic in human flesh ; and we must do by him what all the mis- 
sionaries of Christendom besides could not do for a quarter of the 
globe — span it with an equatorial church, redeem it from the curse of 
Ham, and overspread the mysteries of darkness and death on its bosom 
with the mysteries of "a kingdom which cannot be moved." 

Such is the composite object we offered sixty years ago as a true 
catholicon for the African race. And who can doubt it now, or 
allege that it was faulty or mistaken in any one of its ingredients ? 
We seem to be hindered at present from gathering certificates on 
every hand. Party faction, more than sectional faction ever did, pre- 
vents us from asking Congress, and State after State, and church after 
church to witness the excellence of our object and the wisdom of our 
way. But it is enough to recall the memorials of attestation, which 
all men must honor, as a verdict on the past and a trust for the future. 
It would be well to begin another decade with a roll-call of the orig- 
inal officers and members, and ask what one of those illustrious men 
would now, if he were living, and led by the logic of events which 
have intervened, regret the institution, as too slow and cumbrous and 
neutral, or in any one particular as not suited and true to the situation ? 
Would Bushrod Washington, or Henry Clay, or Daniel Webster, or 
John Randolph, or William Thornton, or Francis S. Key, or John 
Mason, or Charles Marsh ; would Robert Finley, or Samuel J. Mills, 
or William Meade ; would any one of the fifty original members who 
sat as peers in the first council of colonization, and represented there 



the patriarchal wisdom of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Marshall, 
sav that the amazing overturn which we have witnessed in this genera- 
tion has altered one syllable of the original platform on which our 
object was placed ? 

1st. " To rescue the free colored people of the United States from 
their political and social disadvantages. 

zd. " To place them in a country where they may enjoy the bene- 
fits of free government, with all the blessings which it brings in its 
train. 

3d. '• To spread civilization, sound morals, and true religion through- 
out the continent ot Africa. 

4th. "To arrest and destroy the slave trade. 

5th. "To afford slave owners who wish or are willing to liberate 
their slaves an asvlum tor their reception." 

Only the last plank of this original has been loosened in the least 
bv the great convulsion through which we have passed. Slave owners 
no longer exist among us with wishes or willingness to be consulted 
and regarded. But surely (he nation itself, whose tiat has broken every 
yoke and made the slaves its own constituency, should be willing to 
liberate them from every ban that is left, from the very name ot 
*' freedman," and help them to an asylum which is absolutely sate, 
and more and more complete in all its appointments and attractions. 
What means "intimidation" m the charges and counter-charges ot this 
convulsive present.' No such word has ever yet been heard at the 
polls of Liberia. No military muster is made, or needed, or called 
for there to guard the franchise of a colored citizen. There, in- 
deed, he is his own master, free to canvass, free to change, free to 
vote, without one claini of antecedents on the one hand, or fear of 
guns upon the other. Is it not now as much as ever, and more 
than ever, "an asylum" for the black man.^ 

If he prefers, af'ter all, to make this country his home, with a view 
to advance the iinprovement of his lot and elevate his race, we are not 
done with him in the true objects of our colonization. We shall stand 
at his side to lielp him and rejoice. For his advancement anywhere 
is not only a chief aim of the Society, but a great auxiliary, both at 
home and abroad. The more elevated he becomes here the more 
fitted he is for Africa — to go himself or send others. We have never 
failed to choose the best for this emigration. If he be not cultured 
enough to know how to work, and how to vote, and how to bear 
office, how to teach and how to christianize in teaching, we do not 



elect him tor the citizenship ot Liberia. We would rather detain 
him, with all the damage his unfitness may do to ourselves, than send 
him over to be a burden or a pest in that community which we seek 
to model for the redemption of a continent. We do not forget the 
war of anti-slavery upon us on account of this kind of selection, and 
its vehement demand that colonization should wait for the best, until 
these could be used at home, in the work of immediate and universal 
abolition. And now we look to the magnanimity of the triumphant 
to spare the intelligence, and industry, and virtue, of which they have 
made so much, in order to propagate for us and Africa this glory of 
the race. 

Twenty-six years ago, Mr. President, at the great anniversary over 
which Henry Clay presided, I believe, for the last time, having the 
President of the United States on his right, and a vast audience, com- 
posed largely of statesmen, ambassadors, and philanthropists of the 
highest rank before him; after almost every phase of the subject had 
been swept by his magnificent eloquence at the opening, and after the 
Rev. Dr. Fuller, then of Baltimore, had followed him with ingenious 
prophecy and tender pathos which continued that brilliant assembly 
in a trance, you were felicitous enough, under all the disadvantage of 
being third orator in such a succession, to hold the unflagging interest 
of that house with the great thought that the work of the Society is 
more at present with Africa than with America; to make the Colony 
attractive and draw to itself, without the persuasion of agencies here, 
the crowd that must be always eager to make their own condition 
better. That thought is my gateway to another line of truth, the 
truth of facts, as well as principles, in your beneficent and steady 
working to this hour. 

You began with a careful and costly experiment on the Coast to 
find the most healthy location for your Colony. The life of Mills 
himself was paid in that experiment. But you succeeded. Even 
Plymouth and Jamestown, for health to the Englishman, were not to 
be compared with Monrovia for health to the American negro. You 
began with a tutelage to govern the colonist, because the power of 
self-government in him had not then been developed or tried ; and he 
became at once heroic in the hands of your Agency; refused to follow 
disheartened "tutors and governors" back to America; took the guar- 
dianship of himself into his own hands; declined the ofJer of British 
marines to protect him at the price of only a few feet to be ceded for 
their flagstaff, and with a band of but thirty-five fighting men repulsed 



the natives, led by their kings, with eight hundred in one battle, and 
double this number in another. Such heroes were Lett Cary and 
Elijah Johnson. They would buy territory for themselves and make 
their own Trustees of the chivalric Stockton and Ayres, who pur- 
chased Cape Mesurado for such colonists at the hazard of their own 
lives. We do not wonder that Ashmun and Gurley hastened in their 
wisdom to divide with such colonists the government of their own 
Commonwealth, and that the Society itself hastened to fulfil its prom- 
ise from the first, to resign its own authority as soon as the freedman 
could stand for himself. 

Nations are slow of growth, especially in the cradle of their youth. 
A centenary is the familiar unit with which we measure the growth 
of our own in its boast of unparalleled progress. But one quarter of 
a century — scarcely more than enough of years to bring the infancy 
of an individual man to the majority of manhood — was enough to 
bring your first handful of emigrants, who landed as guests merely at 
Sierra Leone and Campelar, without a foot of tcrritorv or shore to be 
called their own, to the dignity and independence of a Republic com- 
plete in ever)' department of a nation's power, and acknowledged by 
the greatest nations of the world. And what if the subsequent advance 
in material greatness may not correspond with such a beginning, and 
the reproach of disappointed hope may have come to hinder the ex- 
pansion of colonization zeal among ourselves.^ Does not life in all its 
analogies demand a quiet solidification to succeed a rapid growth ? It 
would be impossible for a narrow Coast of six hundred miles bv fifty, 
with a vast interior of teeming and savage people pressing on its civil- 
ization with a proportion of twenty-five to one, at the process of assim- 
ilation, to go fast without being overwhelmed. It is the slowness of 
safety ; it is the compactness of unity ; it is the balancing of maturity ; 
in all respects the opposite of failure and decline, which must explain 
the present appearance of results in Liberia. Your thought is right 
and true, and your promise fulfilled, that Africa is overtaking America 
in the power of attracting immigration. Its agriculture is improving, 
its commerce increasing; its education already commands the respect 
of Universities in Europe, and its documents of State have become the 
admiration of Governments over the civilized world. The romance 
of travel is all gathered now to the old continent which it fringes and 
guards and aims to redeem. The engineer is at the heels of the ad- 
venturer in this age, and he is always followed soon by trains of immi- 
gration. 



8 

The attraction to Africa of her own children will be a stream 
which is not to be reversed. Our great asvlum in this land for all 
nations already suffers some reversal. The skill of industries, and 
even the toil of common labor, have almost crowded the voyage back 
to the old world of late, because of the redundancy and the mixture 
of races to be met in our workshops and fields. The discouragement 
of capital is much; oppressive legislation is more; but most ot all is 
the jostle of nationalities — Caucasian, Ethiopian, and Mongolian — in 
their free fight for employment and a living, the cause of this back- 
ward turning from America. But Africa forbids by her climate all 
competition with her sons. There may be on the heights of her 
grand interior safe retreats from the fever of her Coast to attract in 
coming time enough of other kindreds to stimulate the development 
of her own myriads and make a civilization equal to the best ; but 
the din of busy occupation, the hum of toiling millions, the rewards- 
of tillage on her exuberant soil must be chieflv, by God's own appoint- 
ment, Ethiopian. 

His blessing has attended thus far the work of your hands. This 
might indeed be counted on, when we know it is right and true by its 
principles and aims; and if our depression had been a thousand times 
deeper than it ever was, the integrity of motive and operation would 
have assured us that God is with us. But see the signals of His pres- 
ence and direction from the beginning. It was no sudden or acci- 
dental thought of Dr. Finley or anv other agent in the first convoca- 
tion. It was older than the Revolution of American Colonies in its 
meditation and projection, and when the time had come "all things 
worked together for good." Patriotism in the legislative councils of 
Virginia; piety in the conference of clergymen at Prinaeton, N. J., 
and missionary ardor among the students of theology at Andover, 
flowed together simultaneously to begin this organization. God has 
ennobled it in the succession of its Presidents. Washington, Carroll, 
Madison, and Clay have been the line of your predecessors. He has 
guided the selection of agents and officers of every kind without one 
mistake in the appointments of human wisdom. He has prospered 
the voyage at all times, without one shipwreck with loss of life in 
sixty years. Truly we may thank Him and take courage. "What 
hath God wrought?" We may well rely on His abiding benediction 
when we feel sure that His own ark is in it, as it was in the House of 
Obed-edom. 

The white man sent with the gospel to Africa perishes quickly and 



!) 

constantly, as if it were the " breach upon Uzzah " tor him to attempt 
any more the devout but deadly adventure. And vet the living min- 
ister must go there with the great commission upon him. It is the 
Divine appointment. Bibles and tracts and schools are treasures ot 
unspeakable value ; but we must keep them " in earthen vessels" — men 
oi like passions with others. " The foolishness of preaching," more 
than eloquence of any other sort, must be made to save men by means 
of sympathy between man and man. It is the colored preacher that 
must go, and go as a colonist, identified with the emigrating band in 
seeking a home, or brought up in the colony itself and educated there. 

Halfway back in the lapse of your anniversary time, and more than 
half way back to the first planting of the colony, Mr. Clav said from 
that chair, " What Christian is there who does not feel a deep inter- 
est in sending forth missionaries to convert the dark heathen and bring 
them within the pale of Christianity ? But what missionaries can be 
so potent as those it is our purpose to transport to the shores of Africa ? 
Africans themselves by birth, or sharing at least African blood, will 
not all their feelings, all their best affections induce them to seek the 
good of their countrymen ? At this moment there are between four 
and five thousand colonists who have been sent to Africa under the 
care of this Society ; there are now twenty-five places of public vv-or- 
ship dedicated to the service of Almighty God and to the glorv ot the 
the Saviour of men ; and I will venture to say that they will accom- 
plish as missionaries of the Christian religion more to disseminate its 
blessings than all the rest of the missionaries throughout the globe." 

About the time our great patriotic statesman was talking thus, like 
an eloquent evangelist. Lieutenant Forbes, of the British Navy, was 
publishing his book on Dahomey, in which it was virtually declared 
that Liberia was a cheat, and that our Society was engaged in trans- 
ferring to the shores of Africa American slavery under another name. 
The prompt denial of this, and triumphant appeal to the Constitution 
of the Society and the facts of history, could not hinder the American 
Anti-Slavery Society from siding with Forbes and maligning Clay, and 
insisting that our officers had evaded the issue in their emphatic refu- 
tation. Where, now, is the truth, after all that obloquy, and the vic- 
tories of our assailants, and the overthrow of slavery, and the advent 
of freedmen to search for themselves the records ot Congress, and 
twelve States at least, and ecclesiastical assemblies innumerable, attest- 
ing the singleness of aim with which the Society has always sought 
to secure the libertv and culture and salvation of the negro .^ Our 



10 

existence itself at the Sixtieth Anniversary may answer. Persistency 
is triumph wherever truth is marshaled. The pointing of your linger 
is equal to the marching ot a host, when all things are ready. Vindi- 
cated, established, and successful, beyond all precedent, among the 
voluntary societies of the world, I would say to you "stand still, and 
see the salvation of the Lord." But you have already listened to 
these words long enough, with the raging of a red sea before you, 
and the pillar of the cloud behind you. Your great opportunity, 
God's own opportunity for movement, has come, and louder than a 
thousand billows the voice of His Prophet is heard, saying, "go for- 
ward." What if the patriotism and the philanthropy both should yet 
be challenged and impugned whilst the public mind is bewildered 
with the problem of freedmen at our doors by the million.^ Those 
objects were feet in your progress. Take now the wings which have 
infolded them all along, and spread these to heaven henceforth, and 
let all men see the ultimate and main identity of your mission : 
"Another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting 
gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every 
nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." 

Surely nothing is lost to humanity or patriotism or any other object 
of your manifold original by soaring in this way. It is infinitelv better 
to be narrowed upwards than downwards, to have the expanse of a 
firmament that touches everything with light and life to be your mar- 
gin than the vale of cold and dark infidelity, where so many other 
societies have descended to die. Let it be seen that the best economy 
of Christian Missi®ns attaches itself to the work of Colonization, as 
Hopkins, and Stiles, and Mills, and Burgess, and Ashmun, and Alex- 
ander have taught us to believe, and America and Africa both are 
yours, and both shall pass away from the orbit of earth before the 
crown of your immortality shall fade. 



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